Romania participated in this year’s edition of EMF Champions League with nine teams. The teams representing the most decorated nation in the history of European minifootball managed good results, almost equalling those of last year. In Maribor, Romanian teams finished second, third and fourth, now in Terme Catez, they managed third and fourth place.
Romania had very high expectations from the second edition of the EMF Champions League. After last year’s results in Maribor where they finished second (Juventus Sibiu), third (MAV Continental Timisoara) and fourth (Boromir Ramnicu Valcea), this year the Romanians had their eyes on the big prize.
The competition started perfect for the nine teams representing Romania, the most successful nation in minifootball, with 6 continental titles to their names, from 2010 to 2015. Eight of the nine teams overcame the group phase and proved to be well adapted to the grass courts of Terme Catez. Seven of them got to the last 16 phase, and four managed to enter the quarter finals.
The competition got fierce at this stage. Juventus Sibiu managed to get past Tiki Taka Warsaw after penalties in the quarter finals, Romanian Cup winners, CS Luceafarul Cluj, lost against Bosnian Ecos, while Golden Boys succumbed to fellow Romanians, MAV Glissando Timisoara after a penalty shootout in the quarter finals. Therefore, two Romanian teams made it to the semi-finals.
Luck was not on their side however, as both Sibiu and Timisoara lost with the same scoreline, 0-1, to Ecos from Bosnia and Dadi Eurozox from Montenegro, respectively in the semi-finals.
The Romanian teams showed good strength in the end, and MAV Timisoara repeated their result from last year, beating fellow countrymen from Juventus Sibiu in a penalty shootout of the plate final and finishing with the bronze medals. Sibiu, after finishing second last year and knocking out title holders, Aramis-SE Mad Dogs (Hungary) in the first knockout stage this year, had to settle for fourth.
„The quality of the pitches was better than last year and the location was more adequate to this sort of competition. A problem for the Romanian teams was the high number of games in a short time span, but overall I can say our teams did a good job in the competition and considering that the level of play in the competition was better than last year, we can conclude that we had positive results this year” said Attila Takacs, Federation General Secretary of the Romanian Minifootball Federation.
“We hope that our teams are happy with what they’ve achieved in Terme Catez. I’m happy that Romania was at top level in this competition and our teams showed that they can represent the country with honour.”
Now Romania can prove their strength at the upcoming WMF World Cup in Tunisia (6th-15th October), where they will play their first match against former European Champions Kazakhstan on the 7th of October (Saturday).